


O Lazarus

by Trinary



Category: The Transformers: Regeneration One, Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Body Horror, Fix-It, Gen, Giant Robots, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Mind Control, Past Abuse, Robots, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 18:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13932783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary
Summary: In which two heavily damaged, touch-starved robots fuck off into deep space and leave the war behind.Or: Starscream’s falling apart, Shockwave is a spaceship, and nobody is okay.





	O Lazarus

**Author's Note:**

> OH BOY. This one’s going to take some explanation. I saw [this](https://trinarysuns.tumblr.com/post/171696558652/hey-quick-question-megatron-what-the-fuck-is) panel from Regeneration One, went “what the fuck, Megatron?” and skimmed the first few issues of R1 to find out what was going on. As it happens R1 kind of sucks, but it has one interesting plot thread, and it’s this:
> 
> The nations of Earth tried to nuke Megatron. Megatron was like “lol” and used his ship’s AI to retarget the nukes onto human cities. In the decades that followed Megatron’s been warlording it up in the wreckage, steadily more unhinged. He’s turned his army into mindless servants—except Starscream, who he’s kept self-aware but locked inside his own head, mute and helpless. When the wreckers show up to break shit Starscream forces his way past the reprogramming to tell them how to kill Megatron. In thanks, he’s tossed into a mass grave and just barely crawls out before the bodies are vaporized behind him.
> 
> Starscream limps back to Megatron’s damaged ship. Galvatron follows and forces the still-mostly-helpless Starscream to give him access to the AI controls… Only the ship never had an AI. Just Shockwave, who’s been wired into the mainframe for twenty years.
> 
> Shockwave and Starscream both realize Galvatron’s just as unhinged as Megatron, but Shockwave can’t function without a captain. They team up, install Starscream as captain, blow Galvatron out an airlock, and fuck off into space.
> 
> So here we are.

Starscream no longer remembers what it’s like not to wake in pain.

He swims up to awareness in pieces. He doesn’t remember where he is, _why_ he is. His sluggish processor feeds him flashes: the mud and the dust. His isolation in his own body, his helpless rage. The wreckers. Two words from a burning throat. A pit full of almost-corpses.

The ship. After everything, _the ship_.

To have control over his own limbs—his own _voice_ —it's a luxury Starscream’s still getting used to. He twitches his fingers before he brings his optical system online just to be sure he can. They grind but they move. That’s what he gets when the only washing he’s had for two decades are rainstorms thick with black dust.

The fallout has done nothing kind, either.

When Starscream lets himself be aware of his surroundings, he’s tucked into the alcove next to Shockwave’s splayed-open leg, cushioned on the cables that go in and out. He must have fallen into recharge there. Cuddling with _Shockwave_ , ugh. In the past he might’ve been embarrassed at waking up this way, but the last two decivorns have drastically recalibrated his concept of humiliation. No one’s here to look at him, anyway. Shockwave’s single optic points straight ahead, dull and unfocused. If he minds that Starscream’s here he hasn’t said anything.

Shockwave’s hip plating is warm and faintly buzzing with a ship’s worth of signals. Starscream wonders if Shockwave can even feel him there. Shockwave’s part of the ship, now, inextricable as the double glyph he uses to refer to himself. [I/We], one discordant sound, as if there’s no place Shockwave ends and it begins.

And Starscream is his captain. He still isn’t sure what that will mean. All he’d wanted to do was—get away, and he’s done that. The place in his head that’s always planning for the future spins in useless circles. Megatron’s gone. Galvatron’s… Not here, but if anyone could survive a rough drop from orbit, it’s that pit-spawned glitch. Starscream files him tentatively under _not my problem_ and forgets him.

Starscream doesn’t want to move. Now that he’s conscious all the little dings and scratches—and the not-so-little ones—on his frame twinge and ache. The gash on his chest cuts almost to the protoform. His optic has never sat right after the seam below was pulled open. His thruster’s felt wrong for years. Starscream’s caked with filth and grime enough to make his old self howl, but right now he’s just… Tired. Even if the ship’s washracks still work, he can’t use them without risking filling his wounds with solvent. The crude plate on his helm—

But he doesn’t want to think about that.

He’s on the ship alone with Shockwave, who at this point is questionably a person. So Starscream is alone. He’s safe. [Alone/Safe]. They mean the same thing.

[Are you unwell, Captain Starscream?] Shockwave comms him.

Starscream startles. The sound he makes is almost recognizable as laughter. [That sounds wrong, coming from you. It’s about time you acknowledged my position.]

[[I/We] have ample evidence you respond well to recognition of status. It is logical to keep [the ship’s/my] captain in a beneficial state of mind. [The ship’s/My] functioning depends on it.]

“How flattering,” Starscream croaks. He might be able to force words out, now, but his voice is a ruin. “I’ll be sure to think happy thoughts.”

But now he’s thinking about the ship’s well-being as well as his own. The ship is in worse shape than he is, spaceworthy but limping. Being grounded for decades didn’t help. What especially didn’t help is whatever the humans did that half-fried Shockwave and blew out a quarter of the ship’s systems. The gaping hole in the cargo bay they knocked Galvatron out of is the fresh wax on a smouldering wreck. It’s a lucky thing the ship has drones. It would take a thousand years to fix everything himself.

A drone goes trundling by as he thinks about it; a squat little cleaner, scrubbing a patch of dried energon off the floor. Starscream suspects it's his own. Delightful.

[[My/Our] scans show you're in need of repairs. [My/Our] remote access to your verbal centres was quick and crude. Further work is necessary. [I/We] recommend a full systems overhaul to return your frame to nominal functioning.]

“Can you see me?” Starscream asks, warily.

[Yes.]

Shockwave’s optic hasn’t moved a fraction. It definitely isn’t looking at him.

Starscream’s plating crawls with unease. He stands and regrets it as bright warnings pop all over his field of vision. Low fuel, misaligned hydraulics, the muted wrongness somewhere in his leg that his neural net can’t make sense of and he doesn’t want to examine. Starscream takes a couple of steps away from Shockwave’s suspended form and leans on the wall. Shockwave, like the ship, like himself, looks worse than he remembers.

“A full systems overhaul will be a little difficult when I’m the only one with hands, don’t you think?” Starscream asks.

[The medical bay is equipped with all required materials. Repairs can be effected.]

Starscream almost doesn’t want to ask. “And a medbay with no medics is useful to me how, exactly?”

 

Starscream stares at the automated medical berth in mounting dread. It looks like a torture device. He is, in fact, almost certain he’s seen them repurposed as torture devices. It has variable clamps for the wrists, ankles, neck, waist and wings. It bristles with monitoring equipment. An array of fat black cables tipped with knives and welding heads dangle from above like a corpse’s ripped-out lubricant lines. He can’t make himself take the last two steps.

“Are you sure this thing works?” Starscream asks empty air.

Shockwave’s comm comes as if he’s standing just behind Starscream, out of sight. The ship must be riddled with cameras.

[The autodoc is functioning at ninety-six percent efficiency. [I/We] have rerouted power from nonessential sectors.] Shockwave says it like that’s supposed to be comforting. [Climb onto the berth.]

Against his better judgment, Starscream does.

He half expects the restraints to snap shut and the saws to rip him apart. None of that happens. Instead a display screen near his head flashes [Please remain still] and a flickering laser grid scans him helm to toe. He tries not to move during the process. When it’s done the message disappears, and after a klik a full diagram of his body pops up with trouble spots highlighted in red.

The diagram is mostly red, with a little yellow and purple thrown in for colour.

[[I/We] see nothing immediately life threatening, except your fuel levels. Please remember to maintain adequate reserves in the future, captain.]

Shockwave’s dispassionate presence is almost a comfort.

There’s a slight sting on Starscream’s left elbow joint. It’s the needle of a feed line going in. Some of the warnings dancing in front of Starscream’s face flicker and vanish as the medical grade hits his systems.

“I can feed myself, you know,” Starscream tells him.

[Not while on a surgical table. Inefficient.]

On the screen, the diagram rotates and zooms in on a few key spots: the worst of the red and the places the damage isn’t superficial. It’s… Not quite automatic. There’s a deliberateness. Starscream has a terrible suspicion.

“This isn’t automated, is it?” Starscream asks, before he can stop himself. “You’re doing this.”

[It is automated. [I/We] [am/are] also here.]

_Sweet Primus._ Shockwave is the entire ship, isn’t he? He’s the table under Starscream’s back and the medbay doors and the lights glaring down from above. It’s more frightening than if no one was at the controls.

[[I/We] will begin with the deep weld in your right major chestplate, moving on to the cracked strut below. Do not move. [I/We] will use the restraints if necessary.]

“Wait,” Starscream says, and the cortical pain patch hits him like a freighter.

Nothing hurts.

Absolutely nothing hurts.

Starscream feels like he’s floating, stunned, processor glitching as it tries to process the signals that just… Aren’t, anymore. It’s so intense that for a klik his systems parse it as pleasure. Even when it renormalizes he shakes with the magnitude of not-pain. It used to be like this all the time. This used to be normal, and then—

Then—

The surgical arms drop as Shockwave starts his work. It’s with a curious detachedness that Starscream watches sparks fly. When Shockwave’s finished with Starscream’s chest he works down his body methodically. Even in the places Starscream’s not wounded he’s covered in a thousand little dents and scratches, paint peeling and glass chipped.

When Shockwave gets to the part of Starscream's leg marked on the diagram in smudgy purple, he cracks it open and pauses.

“What is it?” Starscream asks.

A single grasper arm runs the length of Starscream’s leg and down to the thruster on his heel. It takes hold of the thruster’s edge and tilts it for a better view from some camera. A second grasper knocks some of the caked-on organic filth onto the floor.

[How long have you had trouble with this thruster?]

“Maybe a decivorn. I don’t remember.”

Starscream could swear there’s a moment of hesitation before Shockwave says anything. [You have a rampant rust infection. This will have to be disassembled and debrided. You may feel it even through the pain patch.]

Starscream offlines his optics and lets out a slow breath. He’s not exactly surprised. He’d known something was wrong as pain turned into an ache, and an ache to radiating numbness. He just—didn’t think about it, because there was nothing he could do, no one he could tell, and if Megatron had found out, he…

Starscream doesn’t want to consider what Megatron would have done to him. Megatron already had him mute and helpless. If he'd been immobile, too…

“Do it,” Starscream says.

[Yes, captain.]

Shockwave starts disassembling him.

Shockwave is careful. Even as the pain filters through the patch, he’s careful. Megatron never was. He went in fast and crude, big fingers jammed into Starscream’s cracked helm as Starscream struggled uselessly against him, needles in his processor, everything hot and bright until he tasted burning hydraulic fluid and forgot how to speak. Starscream remembers begging at the end even though he promised himself he wouldn’t; words coming out in a useless jumble until they weren't words at all. He remembers Megatron grinning wider with every sound Starscream lost. How he laughed when he let Starscream go and told him to get up, and Starscream, dizzy and hurting and half-blind, found his body obeying without his consent.

How it went on. How it went on, and on, for twenty cycles around that planet’s miserable yellow sun, on the irradiated ruin of what could have been an empire.

[Are you well?] Shockwave asks.

Starscream tries to say _yes_. He tries to say _fine_. He can’t find the words. He doesn’t know them, and he can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_ —

There’s a sourceless thin whine filling the room that takes him too long to realize is coming from him, some overstressed component straining. He shivers so hard the berth rattles. The dull ache radiating up his leg has just enough of an edge to tell him that something is wrong with it. Something is very, _very_ wrong. System warnings pop and blur. He can’t get enough air.

Something blunt and flexible bumps his face. He flinches but it bumps him again, insistent, like a clumsy hand.

Starscream focuses on it. It’s a grasper arm, its pincers turned away. When it touches him again, it’s more deliberate. Chin to cheek and down again, avoiding the spot where his optical seam is torn. The idea of Shockwave being comforting is so bizarre it knocks Starscream right out of his panic loop. The impulses to jerk back and press into the touch conflict and all he can do is stay still.

When Megatron turned all the other decepticons into… Into _this_ , Starscream was the only one he left remotely intact. There was Ratchet, but that might have been worse. At least Starscream had his body. Telling the wreckers to kill him was Starscream's own revenge, but maybe it was mercy, too. Starscream’s not sure how much was left of Ratchet by the end.

Starscream doesn’t remember when he gave up trying to communicate with the others. When all he got back from Thundercracker and Skywarp were their blank staring optics and the hissing silence where their trine bond should have been. He’s touched others, in that time, just—in recharge, curled close, pretending.

No one has touched him.

“What are you doing?” Starscream asks.

[Abrading your main femoral strut. Captain, the deck six aft cargo bay requires repair. Shields are holding at seventy-two percent but [I/we] risk losing atmosphere the longer the outer wall goes unmended.]

Now Starscream's completely lost. “Wh-what?”

[[My/Our] drones are inefficient at such large-scale patching. When this is concluded, and after a suitable rest period, that should be your first priority.]

Of course Shockwave's worried about the ship’s (his own?) integrity. Still, Starscream seizes on the distraction. “The hole in the upper hull isn’t a bigger problem?”

[The adjoining sections lost pressurization when we launched. They're irrelevant.]

“They can’t get worse, you mean.”

[That would be one way of putting it.]

Starscream groans. He can see his future, and it’s a long endless stream of welding, riveting, and grubbing around in the electrical subsystems. He might be filthy already, but the gunk that accumulates in a ship’s moving parts is a special sticky awfulness. Starscream’s not looking forward to picking it out of his joints.

Speaking of maintenance, what about Shockwave? He’s been broken open with half his internals exposed for all the time Starscream was wandering around on Earth. Starscream wouldn’t worry about it, but Shockwave’s survival is his survival. He had the drones, but trapped damaged and immobile for so long—

A grasper taps the plate in the side of Starscream’s helm. Starscream freezes.

[This may be more tolerable for you in stasis.]

It takes Starscream a klik to realize it’s a question, as the grasper doesn’t peel the plate away and jam its tines inside. Shockwave waits as Starscream’s vocalizer clicks and he drags his words together.

Stasis would be easier. He could have a blank space and wake up with his head reassembled. Skip over the time. But if he stops—if he ever stops—will he wake up as himself? Will he see the point where he slips away and something else takes up residence? Will he feel it? Will he know?

He’s shaking again. The other grasper pets his face.

“No stasis,” Starscream says.

[Acknowledged.]

A welding torch flares to life.

It’s… Bad. Shockwave keeps talking about the ship, the repairs, everything that needs to be fixed, the fuel levels and the stockpiles and all of it. Starscream lets the words wash over him as the crude patch job's removed, as his helm’s broken open, as his processor’s exposed. Air whispers over its surface in a way air absolutely should not. It doesn’t hurt as the needles go in.

Shockwave doesn’t stop touching his face. Starscream focuses on that as everything else fades to unreality, Megatron’s voice low and mocking from somewhere just out of sight.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Shockwave says, [it’s done.]

Starscream looks down at himself. He’s more welds than paint. The chipped remains of red and white straggle through fields of shiny grey. It’ll be a while until they settle down enough to be resurfaced, and longer still before his nanites claw their way up to a respectable population density. The cortical pain patch has been removed. He hurts, but a different kind of hurt. His leg and thruster throb with the sharp sting of repair subsystem warnings instead of the soft sick confusion of corroded contacts.

He touches his helm, tentatively. It’s the shape it should be, in bright unpainted metal.

[Please refrain from contaminating your fresh welds, Captain Starscream.]

Starscream’s hand jerks away. “If I survived the last twenty years, this certainly isn’t going to kill me.”

 _Oh_. His voice is… It’s not perfect, but better. He sounds like himself again, all the jagged edges sanded out. Starscream touches his throat. 

“You fixed my voice.”

[[I/We] made many repairs. Proceed to the medical washracks to avoid a recurrence of your rust infection.]

The fragger just doesn’t want Starscream’s filth flaking off and dirtying up his medbay. In fairness, Starscream wouldn’t, either. Starscream slides unsteadily off the berth and stands. His repaired leg holds his weight but isn’t happy about it.

[Proceed to the medical washracks,] Shockwave prompts him.

“I don’t know where that is.”

Shockwave pings him a destination marker. It’s not far, just through the doors and down the hall. Starscream makes his way there.

The washracks are neither shabby nor extravagant. They’re plain and functional, made for medics and patients alike. A dispenser has cracked and oozed its contents down the wall sometime while the ship lay derelict. The whole place reeks of the obnoxious standard-issue cleanser he’s hated for the better part of four million years.

When he activates the controls, the solvent sputters and comes out warm.

He cleans himself mechanically, careful of Shockwave’s work. Black runs off his armour. It pools around his feet. Clumps of organic filth and lubricant clogged with who-knows-what land on the tile. His joints are crusted in it. An array of brushes and scrubbers hangs on the wall; he attacks himself with them. In places loose pieces of his paint job peel off in crumbling sheets. He can’t reach the backs of his wings. His ailerons twitch sluggishly and he knows they’re just as filthy as the rest of him. Worse are his seams where grit’s worked its way inside. If he wants to be truly clean it will take at least a day, partial disassembly, a microfiber cloth and someone else’s help.

Maybe he’ll ask Shockwave to scrub his back. _Ha_.

Starscream never thought he’d see the inside of a washrack again. He feels like he’s dreaming. Maybe he is. Maybe some stray bit of rainwater has finally worked its way through Megatron’s shoddy patch job and rusted out the last struggling nodes that keep him connected to the outside world. It all seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Starscream’s free. He’s fixed. He has someone to talk to. Megatron’s dead, and the solvent's warm on his plating.

Maybe this is what it’s like for the others. Turned inward. Safe. No one to hurt them, here.

It’s nice to think about.

Starscream stands under the solvent nozzle for so long his struggling nanites warn him they’re breaking down. It never goes cold. He slaps blindly at the controls until the stream cuts off and the blowers come on, just as warm.

His joints creak as he folds to kneel on the tile. He barely feels it.

Starscream’s mind is slipping. He floats somewhere outside himself. It’s happened before. It used to happen a lot, with Megatron, white noise filling the world as his body moved without him. The hot flare of rage always brought him back; the vicious determination not to submit.

The impossible promise of revenge.

Now there’s nothing to hold him. Starscream’s sinking. He struggles, but it settles over him like the snow that took Skyfire. Numbness follows in its wake. It’s the warmth he can’t fight. If he lets it bury him, he’ll never surface again.

[Captain Starscream,] Shockwave comms him.

Starscream waits, blank, for the order that will come.

Glyphs follow but they aren’t instructions. They wash over him, ephemeral. He doesn’t move. Eventually Shockwave loses patience and pings Starscream another location marker. The marker pulses, bright and simple, laying out a path for Starscream to follow. He lets it lead him, dimly aware of his own motion.

It’s not a long journey.

Starscream finds himself in front of the autodoc. The berth’s been cleaned in his absence, either by self-sterilizing routines or another of the cleaning drones. It’s like he was never there. The incongruity jolts through him, makes this even less real. He’s not sure of anything. Megatron almost broke him but Megatron barely knew what he was doing. Shockwave _does_. He was a scientist. If Starscream gets back onto that berth Shockwave could do anything to him. Anything at all.

[Get on the medical berth.]

Starscream does.

The berth’s flexible limbs descend, the welders and the graspers, the knives and the saws. Their soft rubber weight drapes over Starscream’s body in a moving blanket, tools pointed away. One or two twine loosely around his arms and legs. Not tight enough to be restraints, just—contact. The grasper pets his face like a lover’s touch.

Starscream curls his hand around it and holds it there.


End file.
